Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management

To manage the relationship with the customer a business needs to collect the right information about its customers and organise that information for proper analysis and action. Businesses need to keep data up-to-date, make it accessible to employees, and provide the essential knowledge for employees to convert that data into products that reflect customers' needs.

Customer relationship management (CRM) helps businesses to gain an insight into the behaviour of their customers and modify their business operations to ensure that customers are served in the best possible way. In essence, CRM helps a business to recognise the value of its customers and to make it possible to improve customer relations. The better a business understands its customers, the more responsive it can be to their needs.

Benefiting from CRM is not just a question of buying the right software but businesses must also adapt themselves to the needs of their customers.

In the commercial world the importance of keeping existing customers satisfied and expanding business is paramount.

The importance of customer satisfaction should not be underestimated. Happy customers buy more than unhappy ones, and they do so for a much longer period of time.

They help companies win new customers, instead of sending them to competitors as unhappy customers do. They’re also easier to work with when problems arise; unlike chronically unhappy customers, whom will usually cost money and cause grieve if a business makes even the slightest mistake.

The more opportunities that a customer has to conduct business with a company the better, and one way of achieving this is by opening up channels such as direct sales, online sales, franchises, use of agents, etc. However, the more channels a business have, the greater the need to manage its interaction with its customer base.

It is important to understand that CRM can do more than just improve sales. It can enhance marketing efficiency by enriching the data used to design and execute campaigns; it can reduce operational costs by eliminating redundant and/or wasteful tasks; CRM, if properly executed, can also lead to significant improvements in customer satisfaction.

Often though, the biggest problem with a complex CRM is that the complexity of the whole system results in the customer being treated more like a number than ever, which is exactly what CRM should not be.

CRM can be achieved by:

Finding out about your customers' purchasing habits, opinions and preferences

Profiling individuals and groups to market more effectively and increase sales